hugh totten of the valorem law group joins us via skype this morning. good morning to you, hugh, and why is it so tough to prosecute wall street? > > these are very complex crimes. but i think the tougher thing that causes the government to back away is, there are so many elements of the government at work that are in opposition to each other. so if the justice department wanted to prosecute somebody right now, they would have to deal with, for example, the financial crimes inquiry comission report that came out a couple years ago and said the entire mortgage crisis and the economic crisis that we have had was caused by the lack of regulation, not because anybody did anything bad. they also said that there was no problem with the rating agencies and now the department of justice is trying to sue one of the rating agencies. so you have all these different people involved in the mix going in different directions. > the justice department has a new approach, and that is to actually push for guilty pleas. this has not been the norm, there have simply been so

attorney hugh totten thinks the government's efforts are misguided. "the ratings companies are not the primary sellers of these collateralized debt obligations. these guys just rated these things." s&p ratings are considered reliable opinions in a field where the number of competitors is limited. yet s&p says its ratings weren't much different from theirs. but the justice department alleges that s&p's had conflicts of interest. "i think the government has a whistle-blower. it has to have someone in the wings willing to come forward to say that he told his superiors that he was going to commit fraud and they went along with it. without that, i don't think this lawsuit succeeds." there may be one whistle-blower or more. in announcing the lawsuit, attorney general holder says analysts within s&p raised concerns but were ignored, while losses investigators say they've traced to s&p total more than $5 billion. s&p says 20/20 hindsight is not basis to take legal action against the good-faith opinion of professionals. settlement talks reportedly broke down a